Smuggler's Roost, Animas, New Mexico

I’ve been on HIVE for about a year now, and am still discovering new and wonderful communities and dapps. This week I got excited to learn about pineapple and haveyoubeenhere.

In January my wife and I began traveling and living out of our van while we continue to work online as personal trainers. We’ve wanted to adventure and continue to work, and van life seemed the ideal way to do so until we decide to settle down again.

Originally we wanted to use social media to chronicle our journey and share special memories with friends. But day by day I grow to like using conventional web 2 social media less and less. So, aside from a few instagram posts and a tik tok or two, I haven’t really shared as much as I had planned.

But since there’s a whole app on HIVE focused on travel, I think that might change now. I’ve got a lot of places to write about, and photos to share. For the sake of refraining from spamming I’ll limit my posts to every day or so and reflect on some of the places we’ve been so far. And I look forward to sharing adventures in the future as well.

For today, I look back on our first stop when we left Tucson, AZ to head east. We spent a month in Animas, NM.

Now, Animas doesn’t have any real attractions. It’s a small town of a few hundred people or so and not even a single traffic light. The nearest big store was about 50 miles away. Animas had a post office, a pizzeria, a gas station, and a school. That’s about it.

We stayed at an RV park with aspirations of growing into a neat little artist community called Smuggler’s Roost. The power and water connections were a little crude, as was the bathroom and shower. There were rarely many people camped there, and most were just passing through.

So, why did we stay here for a month? Simple. We had been working hard building our business for a decade without taking many days off. We’d been married for nearly 20 years without ever taking a vacation. Work and kids and clients were constantly vying for our time. And after closing down the brick and mortar gym due to Covid and all of the struggles associated with that, we wanted to be very, very alone. And that’s what Animas provided.

Spending a month in such a stark and severe landscape without hardly any other human contact was good for us. While we still worked and engaged with our clients remotely, we had lots of time to reassess our goals and priorities in life.

For us, this time in New Mexico was blissfully absent of adventure. But also blissfully absent of stress. With little outside influence we were able to imagine the future adventures we truly want to take, and learn a little bit about our own evolving values system.

Would I recommend a trip to Animas? Maybe. If you’re looking to disappear for a bit and be left alone it’s great. If you’re looking for high adventure and lots of social activity, this is definitely not the place for you. The RV park billed itself as being accessible to lots of hiking and historical areas for fun. But we stayed put and didn’t leave town. This part of the trip was definitely an excursion into our own brains. It was pleasant, but we were ready to leave and begin some real adventures after about 3 weeks.

I have fond memories of the nothingness that was New Mexico. I hope you enjoy some of these pics as well. Where have you visited that was full of solitude and little else?

Smuggler's Roost - Animas, New Mexico

I’ve been on HIVE for about a year now, and am still discovering new and wonderful communities and dapps. This week I got excited to learn about pineapple and haveyoubeenhere.

In January my wife and I began traveling and living out of our van while we continue to work online as personal trainers. We’ve wanted to adventure and continue to work, and van life seemed the ideal way to do so until we decide to settle down again.

Originally we wanted to use social media to chronicle our journey and share special memories with friends. But day by day I grow to like using conventional web 2 social media less and less. So, aside from a few instagram posts and a tik tok or two, I haven’t really shared as much as I had planned.

But since there’s a whole app on HIVE focused on travel, I think that might change now. I’ve got a lot of places to write about, and photos to share. For the sake of refraining from spamming I’ll limit my posts to every day or so and reflect on some of the places we’ve been so far. And I look forward to sharing adventures in the future as well.

For today, I look back on our first stop when we left Tucson, AZ to head east. We spent a month in Animas, NM.

Now, Animas doesn’t have any real attractions. It’s a small town of a few hundred people or so and not even a single traffic light. The nearest big store was about 50 miles away. Animas had a post office, a pizzeria, a gas station, and a school. That’s about it.

We stayed at an RV park with aspirations of growing into a neat little artist community called Smuggler’s Roost. The power and water connections were a little crude, as was the bathroom and shower. There were rarely many people camped there, and most were just passing through.

So, why did we stay here for a month? Simple. We had been working hard building our business for a decade without taking many days off. We’d been married for nearly 20 years without ever taking a vacation. Work and kids and clients were constantly vying for our time. And after closing down the brick and mortar gym due to Covid and all of the struggles associated with that, we wanted to be very, very alone. And that’s what Animas provided.

Spending a month in such a stark and severe landscape without hardly any other human contact was good for us. While we still worked and engaged with our clients remotely, we had lots of time to reassess our goals and priorities in life.

For us, this time in New Mexico was blissfully absent of adventure. But also blissfully absent of stress. With little outside influence we were able to imagine the future adventures we truly want to take, and learn a little bit about our own evolving values system.

Would I recommend a trip to Animas? Maybe. If you’re looking to disappear for a bit and be left alone it’s great. If you’re looking for high adventure and lots of social activity, this is definitely not the place for you. The RV park billed itself as being accessible to lots of hiking and historical areas for fun. But we stayed put and didn’t leave town. This part of the trip was definitely an excursion into our own brains. It was pleasant, but we were ready to leave and begin some real adventures after about 3 weeks.

I have fond memories of the nothingness that was New Mexico. I hope you enjoy some of these pics as well. Where have you visited that was full of solitude and little else?

My rating: 5/10

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